Unconfirmed
by EOlivet
Summary: Sometimes relationships were exactly like people.


Disclaimer: The characters described herein are the property of Hank Steinberg, Jerry Bruckheimer Television Productions and CBS. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
Timeline: Post-Are You Now or Have You Ever Been...  
  
Rating: TV-PG. Jack and Samantha pairing implied.  
  
Acknowledgments: S&D, D&S...you guys rock the AYNOHYEB!!! Thanks so much for your encouragement and support. MSt, thanks for being the best forum ever, and keeping me title spoiler-free! And thanks as always to Anna for the insight.  
  
***  
  
Unconfirmed  
  
***  
  
There's a drawer full of photos. It's the third drawer down in a file cabinet hidden in the corner of the room. Everyone else thinks no one else knows about it, because it's hidden and no one ever talks about it. No one knows who started it, or how everyone somehow seems to find out, even though no one ever tells them. It seems that one day, they are simply drawn to the file cabinet in the corner of the room, and once there, they always manage to find the drawer full of photos.  
  
Photos of those still missing -- the lost, the presumed forgotten. Each photo has a folder and each folder has a name of a person not dead, or at least not yet known to be dead. For now, this is their final resting place. Once the board is wiped clean and the reports are completed and filed away, someone usually retrieves the photo and a folder and puts them both in the third drawer of the filing cabinet in the corner.  
  
The folders are filed neatly, the names written in pen and marker. Black, blue, red, green. Block print and cursive. Neat or barely legible. Danny's and Vivian's and Martin's and Jack's and Sam's handwriting. Yet none of them ever talk about it. Because everyone has to have a hidden file cabinet in the corner, with a drawer full of things forgotten, but not quite forgotten. Things like secret crushes and private failures. Things like hidden relationships.  
  
It had appeared as suddenly as a disappearance. One minute, they were confiding in each other and the next moment, they were kissing. The reasons were too numerous to investigate why. Comfort. Sympathy. Passion and compassion. Sorrow and loneliness and relief. There were only two witnesses, and neither of them could think clearly, especially when she smiled at him a certain way or he caught her glance or they happened to innocently brush against each other. Forensics was no help, as they were careful not to disclose any evidence. Except apparently for security card access records. Phone logs. And half a dozen conduct codes.  
  
They had lost themselves simply by finding each other. But they weren't prepared for what else they'd find. Or what else they'd lose.  
  
A disappearance isn't gradual. People don't slowly fade into nothing. But relationships -- especially hidden relationships -- aren't people.  
  
She knew better than to chase a trail that had gone cold. Yet, like countless witnesses she'd interviewed, she didn't realize it was missing until it was too late. But it was difficult to look for something she couldn't really describe. Evidence was scarce, or so she thought, and the witnesses were useless. One wasn't talking and the other...had gotten too close to remain objective.  
  
Still, some days, she'd run down leads. A smile, a comment, an accidental intentional touch. She'd see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice before it was gone and she was left with more and less than she had before.  
  
Other days, she was convinced she should just give up the search entirely. Some people -- and things -- just wanted to stay hidden. Of course they'd never made exceptions before, never stopped a search because someone didn't want to be found. But then again, people weren't relationships.  
  
Eventually, some people were found -- usually by accident. Their office would get a call from some local PD, holding some scared individual who'd unintentionally discovered something or someone. Since nobody really goes out looking for someone long after they're gone.  
  
People hide others in places no one ever thought to look. Those who were gone never would go there by themselves. Someone else had to put them there. How awful it must've been for these people to stay somewhere they didn't know -- and remain there until someone finally found them. Only now they had to be "identified." And they no longer needed to be rescued -- just retrieved.  
  
Nobody ever knew what to do with those photos. They had never discussed it, because they never talked about the third drawer of the file cabinet in the corner. The pictures were always removed, but there was no formal procedure as to how to handle these type of situations. Their cases were long since processed, their files long since stored away, or buried in the recesses of some computer -- probably in the last place anyone would think to look for them. Just like the people they identified.  
  
But those photos couldn't stay in the third drawer with all the lost souls. Not when they had been retrieved.  
  
Nor when they had been rescued.  
  
It was even rarer, but occasionally they got a different type of call. Usually this one was from a journalist, because rescues -- while not as good stories as disappearances -- were much better stories than identifications and retrievals. They'd all put on the news and watch a version of the person from the photo brought to life. A different and often difficult life to be sure, but a life nonetheless.  
  
Soon afterwards, the person's photo would be gone. Someone would take it out of its folder, out of its home in the third drawer and place it in an envelope to give back to the family. Returning the last part of the one lost to those who loved them. Wondering if these families realized in some small way the loving vigil kept over these people -- tucked safely away in the third drawer of the file cabinet hidden in the corner.  
  
Because those who were found couldn't stay there either. The drawer was for the unclaimed. The remaining question marks in a series of periods and exclamation points. But as long as they remained in that drawer, there was a chance that one day they'd be rescued, and their likenesses would be reunited with their loved ones -- some of whom had already buried them, mourned them and accepted the grief that came from losing them.  
  
Even as those who barely knew them kept their photos in a file cabinet as hidden as the pictures it contained. Out of hope, faith or desperation, the photos stayed there.  
  
Because everyone had to have a hidden file cabinet full of things forgotten, but not forgotten.  
  
A while ago, she had stopped chasing down and started merely acknowledging leads. Everything she felt for him, everything she thought he might feel for her she had tucked away and filed neatly in the third drawer.  
  
Then he had confirmed that it was over.  
  
That should've been the end of it. It couldn't stay there now. It had been waiting to be rescued, and instead it had been identified.  
  
The evidence had been accumulating for months. She had just chosen to ignore it. The witnesses had been saying -- or not saying -- the same thing. She couldn't just disregard their statements. Especially this one. It was conclusive now. It was over.  
  
But she had no idea what to do with it. There was no formal procedure for handling this type of situation. No one ever acknowledged it, so no one ever talked about it.  
  
Yet, despite the evidence, despite what the witnesses had said and heard, despite all the instincts she'd developed and honed that all pointed to the same inevitable conclusion, she couldn't bring herself to get rid of it completely. After all, people made mistakes on cases all the time.  
  
Witnesses had been known to lie. Evidence had been tampered with before.  
  
Some identifications had even been proved false.  
  
So she kept it in her heart, in the third drawer of the hidden filing cabinet -- out of hope, faith or desperation that someday it would be rescued and she could open up and give him everything she felt, everything she thought he might feel for her.  
  
Because sometimes relationships were exactly like people.  
  
The End. 


End file.
